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Semen Collection While on Chemo???

Anyone have any experience with this? My vet has a call in to the oncologist.. I guess my question is would the sperm be viable? And would it even be worth attempting? Would love to have a "Gander" puppy, just not sure if its feasible at this point...

Chemo effects sperm production very quickly. I have had humans do collections up to 3 days after chemo started, but beyond that you will be collecting nonviable sperm. Spermatogenisis takes about 90 days in most mammals. That is the amount of time it takes for the sperm for go from germ cell to mature sperm cell. Because of that there is always mature sperm "in the pipeline" so to speak and epididimal sperm (close to the end of the pipeline) should not see the effects of chemo for a day or two after treatment starts.
This is based on human sperm, but most mammalian reproduction is similar, but dog ejaculate is different and has three fractions that may complicate things. Get him collected ASAP and as often as you ca before he starts chemo.

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Corey Burke

You'll have to collect the dog to know for sure, but the vast majority of dogs on chemo have profound effects on spermatogenesis. This is why we recommend freezing semen prior to starting chemo treatment. Probably one of the most common calls I get from the oncology department. It is also possible to flush the remaining semen from the epidydimis after death if a dog dies suddenly, but it needs to be processed pretty fast, ideally within 24 hours. However, if the dog has been down/ill/on chemo that may not be worth trying as its typically much more expensive with lower quality sperm.

As far as whether its worth attempting, it depends on what his semen quality looks like, but my guess is that he's older and has been ill for a while... neither of those typically correlate with good quality semen. With that said, if its the only thing you've got, bank as much as you can, and maybe you'll only get one breeding out of it if the quality is poor, but at least you have it. I've always figured its better than nothing, and hopefully will give you a nice litter later down the line.